Westland Books announces the launch of Commonwealth Writers Prize Awardee Githa Hariharan’s non-fiction collection This Too Is India: Conversations on Diversity and Dissent

Westland Books today announced the release of Githa Hariharan’s non-fiction, This Too Is India: Conversations on Diversity and Dissent. The book captures wide-ranging conversations with some of the remarkable minds of our time. There are takeaways here for everyone as each conversation unravels, in its unique way, where we are as citizens of the India of our times. This Too Is India, by Context, an imprint of Westland Books, is available on online and offline stores w.e.f. November 11, 2024.

Catering to readers of non-fiction and India’s political culture and history, This Too Is India affirms values essential to both cultural life and democratic politics: reason and dissent, inclusion and diversity, ethical consideration and the secular imagination. It brings together a galaxy of languages, texts and ideas as rich and diverse as the country itself. Within these pages, individual and collective voices describe their experiences, raise questions about and critique fault lines, and imagine an India of lived diversity and ample space for dissent.

Speaking on the launch of her book, author Githa Hariharan said, ‘Each encounter opened a door, or at least a window. It invited me to talk more, read more, write more, think more and go in search of more people with more knowledge. I was no longer a mere writer. Once you are part of a broad front which involves conversations with writers, translators, artists, filmmakers, theatre persons, musicians and dancers, teachers, activists, all from a place like India, how do you go back to being just a writer?’

This Too Is India: Conversations on Diversity and Dissent is now available at bookstores and online. 

About the Book

A DEEP DIVE INTO INDIAN POLITICS, HISTORY, CULTURE

Githa Hariharan talks to twenty intellectuals, writers and artists about the diversity and dissent that make up the many ideas make up India. She frames each of the edited conversations with revealing notes about the lives and work of a host of remarkable people from different constituencies, regions and languages. 

These include Romila Thapar, Nayantara Sahgal, Ayesha Kidwai, Bama, Chinnaiah Jangam, Milind Awad, Aravind Malagatti, Martin Macwan, Shashi Deshpande, Mangai, Vaasanthi, Volga, Ritu Menon, Seema Chishti, T.M. Krishna, Shanta Gokhale, Ashok Vajpeyi, Samik Bandyopadhyay, Sanjna Kapoor, Sunil Shanbag 

Together, these challenging yet engaging conversations take on themes such as the ‘glittering aspiration called India’; the annihilation of caste; women holding up many skies; and the real life practice of cultural politics. 

About the Editor

Githa Hariharan has written novels, short fiction and essays over the last three decades. Her highly acclaimed work includes The Thousand Faces of Night which won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book in 1993, the short story collection The Art of Dying, the novels The Ghosts of Vasu Master, When Dreams Travel, In Times of Siege and Fugitive Histories, and a collection of essays entitled Almost Home: Cities and Other Places. She has also written children's stories and edited a collection of translated short fiction, A Southern Harvest, the essay collection From India to Palestine: Essays in Solidarity and co-edited Battling for India: A Citizen's Reader. Her most recent novel is I Have Become the Tide.

Hariharan has, over the years, been a cultural commentator through her essays, lectures and activism. In 1995, she challenged the Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act as discriminatory against women. The case, Githa Hariharan and Another vs Reserve Bank of India and Another, led to a landmark Supreme Court judgment in 1999 on guardianship.